casts_by_fly

Despite being NJ, we are on the border of living in the sticks. Rewind 30 years ago and this was the sticks. And the power grid is ancient. If a squirrel farts too hard someone looses power in the township. It's a running joke, but it's not inaccurate. Every wind storm with winds over 20 MPH sustained or gusts over 30 there are outages. When the storm rolled through in summer 2020 we were without power for 5 days. We had talked about it before, but that was the point where my wife demanded it. We've not had an incident like that since then, but we lost most of our freezer and fridge at the time. Our friends in town got their power back on day 3 so we went and stayed with them and brought whatever food was still okay. But it was a lot of loss. We have natural gas to the house, so we plumbed for that. We could have gone generac, cummins, or another that I'm forgetting. We went cummins because that's what the service tech recommended. He said they are less maintenence overall and less critical in their maintenence. I think it's a 27KW and the prices 4 years ago were similar to what ScottF put up. I think we were at $15k all in including the transfer switch and install. We have a well, so if you want water to do anything (like flush a toilet or take a shower) you need electricity. We work from home a lot, so no power = no work. In the winter, no power = no heat for us (the tiny living room fireplace wouldn't cut it). And the initial purchase price is for a 15-30 year investment item.

Nights like tonight are why they grabbed Luka. LeBron is out, no matter.

Where are you getting a curado bfs for $125? I did contemplate it. I decided to go for the aldebaran for an extra $100. I don’t love the plastic-y feel of the slx and putting it in the deck next to a set of bantams and metaniums I would have just wanted to upgrade again in the future. YMMV

Just got it in today and made some quick driveway casts. First impressions are that it is what I thought it would be. It's a cara through and through for fit and finish. It feels right at home with the rest of them. Its very tip light, both swing weight and power. Its definitely a fast action, maybe an extra fast. With a light to modest pull (a little over the max casting weight) it flexes to about 5th guide or so. That's 20" on a 86" rod or less than 25%. The tip is very very light. Just an hour ago I was fishing my poison adrena UL/M which is an extra fast action and has maybe the lightest tip on a bass rod I've ever seen. This rod is a close second. Comparing it to the 7'1" Phenix Feather ML, the Phenix is a touch lighter in total weight (3.45 vs 3.3 oz) but the phenix has a little heavier tip and a little more moderate action. The Phenix has more power in the top 25% of the rod, but the Falcon has more in the bottom 50%. I tied on a 1/8oz ball head jig and a 3" twister. Total weight 3/16 oz. With an aldebaran BFS, 10 lb 832, and a long fluoro leader (there was a little noise as the knot passed through which I'll have to sort out) I was throwing 20 yards with an easy side arm or overhead cast. If I wanted to push it I could get 25 yards without blowing up the reel most of the time. There is an element of practice with it for sure but it definitely is smooth to cast. I'm going to get some on the water time in first before I make any sweeping judgements. But based on first impressions I think this rod is what I thought it would be and is going to do the things I want it to do.

I kinda wish we had them around here. When I was growing up my family would take a week in the summer and go north for a cottage vacation and a week of fishing. It started as canada but when the fishing trailed off we swapped to the St Lawrence (and a year at black lake). I remember fishing for bass and seeing big longnose cruising. One time for S&G my dad tied on a mega spook (clear) and worked it back across its nose. It swiped and he handed me the rod. I bet my mom still has the picture of me holding it up back at the dock. It was 48" including the nose. Fun creatures.

supposedly. There is a toggle for 'show points with wave forecast'. I've never used it so can't tell you how to turn it on but I use windfinder most every day. I've found that the wind forecast is pretty good most of the time when you account for any land mass features that might redirect it. Here at the house we are on the face of a hill across a LOOONG valley so the wind is usually amps up a little as it crosses the valley and comes up the hill. Some of my hunting spots are down in valleys and the hills usually direct the wind along the valley and rarely across it. On the water its usually pretty close though. here you go. https://www.windfinder.com/forecast/wares_wharf_rappahannock_river

https://www.windfinder.com/#9/38.7344/-76.6571/spot

you'd need two switches for two batteries. Otherwise you'd be hooking them together via the switch. There might be switches that have two switches built in to the same switch, but I haven't looked.

I'll start at ice out and continue into archery hunting season. September and October will see me choosing between bowhunting and fishing. From the last two weeks of October though, that's prime deer season and I'm usually done fishing for the year. That said, I may take a year off bowhunting. With the new boat I can see where fishing in November will be more pleasurable than in the kayak and I'd like to round out my 'catch a bass in X month' list.

The design on the met is for waterproofness and strength. It’s a great design. There’s no reason to be opening it on the water. Set it somewhere in the 3 or 4 blocks range and fine tune with the dial on the outside.

sounds like daiwa reels speak to you better than shimano. Glad you like them.

no, that’s makes sense that the fish are feeding in a similar range. They are following the bait and there is a certain set of conditions that is triggering them. Could be temp, clarity, plankton making the bait twitchy or just the particular bait that is in that depth range is what they want to feed on.

that was my purely speculative guess without digging. I just did a quick google search and a livewell pump seems to be around 3 amps. On an 8 hour day continuous that’s 24 ah but you’re not going to run continuous. If you’re on a 1 minute on, 5 off timer that’s 4 ah total. That’s more than I had in my head but still not a ton. Led lights are negligible and you only have them on in the dark. The bilge shouldn’t be running unless it’s raining all day. It will be a similar draw to the livewell but won’t be running as much (I hope!).

yeah, for $200 it’s pretty much a no brainer. you’d have to look up your other equipment but I can’t imagine you’d need more than 5 ah since they aren’t constantly running.

look on amazon if you aren’t already. There is the basic 100ah for $209 and the Bluetooth version for $30 more.

A group 31 is nominally 100 ah. But the low voltage cutoff for a humminbird is nominally 10.4v which is around the 80% mark on a lead acid. So best case you’ve got 80 ah and practically speaking you don’t want to push it that low. The helix pulls 2.7A each and the mega live is another 2A. So you’re at 7.4A. 10 hours would be 75ah which is your battery spent. If you need it to do other things then you’re out of luck. I wouldn’t hesitate to go with litime either. In fact I just put two in the new boat build. I went 100ah dedicated for two explor units and ml2. It should be enough for a full day, but I’m not doing more than an 8 hour day. It’s also dedicated and if I kill it I’m only out my fish finder.

It’s in the shop getting wired up and mounted. Pickup Saturday. Both motors are on. Today was fish finders. We were going to flush mount the explor 9 in the console but it’s too deep for the space so it’s going on a ram mount (I was 50/50 on that choice anyway). The pirhanna in the dash is coming out and a plate going in (any clever things I could put in its place?). Saturday is gotcha day.

Same for me. The dt6 in the spring is a thing. The color set offered across the lineup hits all of the right spots for me. They don’t rattle, but with our clear water that’s not a problem. And you can scale up or down from 4-20 with basically the same bait. And they work. I throw in the og4 and 6 circuit bill for a square bill.

Why not a rail mounted clamp on option? Mount to the front railing, port of center towards your livescope pole?

Jetties from shore ?

I suspect you’re partially right. I bet it’s well under filled for a start. Probably loosely wound and/or wind knots. I bet there is some casting technique as well and the rod isn’t loading. The rod is designed to throw what he’s throwing so it’s not like this was a mismatched setup. A sloppy cast not loading the rod up plus heavy braid on a tiny reel which is way underfilled and messily wound. All of that together might be enough to do it.

growing up, we lived within sight of the Mon river, south of Pittsburgh. There were a bunch of small streams that fed the river that all had a similar pattern. The second flood in the spring would bring a bunch of fish up into the creek. the first flood was usually in march and everything was still pretty cold. The second big flood (I'm talking 10' over full pool) would flood the creeks, creek bottoms, and everywhere. The water would be in the 50's at that point. You could fish the mouths of the creeks if you wanted, but if you waited a couple days for it to go down, the creeks would be full of fish. All fish. Primarily that means carp, white bass, and smallies but we'd get drum, crappies, catfish, and you name it. They would go as far as 10 miles up the creeks at times. I think it was a combination of factors- the river was heavy flow and muddy, so the creeks were eddies and slower. They were a little warmer. All of that drew the baitfish and so the schools of other fish followed the bait. I don't recall the smallies spawning up in the creek, though many would just become resident there so there must have been some. The lower reaches would be full of fish and then after not very long they would be sparse- a couple holes would hold them but mostly they just flowed back out with the water. That's what makes me believe it was largely baitfish and rest drawing them up in the first place.

That's a fair point, but you need to consider the limitations also. Braid is great around vegetation and open water. It doesn't like being drug across sharp stuff and it will dig into wood at times. I don't think I'd ever use it for chunking live bait, especially for bottom fishing live bait. If you're snagging up a lot as it is now, you may want to consider slightly lighter lures or ones that don't run quite so deep.

For what you're describing, I wouldn't go to braid. Braid is great at a lot of things, but getting in and out of sharp rocks like you'd get on a spillway isn't one of them. Rocks/mussels/sharp edges are the achilles heel of braid. If you're going to do it, then I would plan for a 15' hard fluoro or mono leader since you're bank fishing and the angle across the rocks is fairly low. Within what you asked, 832 is a great casting braid and 15# would be what I'd fish in your circumstance. I fish 10# (832 and 131) on spinning and BFS and 30/50 on baitcasters. But for you'd I'd bump up to 15# for just a little more forgiveness on abrasion. Maybe even 20#. If you were using a 3k sized reel I'd say 20#, but I don't know the capacity of a 2500 BG. I fish yellow 832 in 10# and green in 30/50. Both are pretty visible if you're a line watcher.

Value for money sure. But you can’t hold a met and slx in hand side by side and say that the slx is better.